Murray State Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

The research study is about the impact of different levels of organic soil amendment on the levels of psychoactive compounds produced in industrial hemp. Inorganic or chemical pesticides or fertilizers are not as extensively used in hemp as in other crops. Apart from this, using an organic soil amendment would be an environmentally sustainable way. A randomized block design (RBD) model was used to study the impacts of the soil amendment. The soil amendment used is called “Rehab” a product of Organilock created from the remnants of animals like fish and chicken. This research design has 3 different soil amendment levels (B-14 gallons per plot, C-21 gallons per plot and D-28 gallons per plot) and a control treatment(No amendment), each replicated three times to minimize the errors. The soil and plant tissue samples were sent to the lab for analyzing the amount of THC and CBD content in plant tissue and the amount of essential nutrients in soil. The THC content was below 0.3% in all the four treatments. This means that the use of soil amendment does not have any negative impact on THC levels of the hemp crop. However, when the CBD levels are compared, all the four samples were below 10% which is on the lower end of the regular CBD yield. Samples from Treatment B (14 gallons per plot) has slightly higher dry weight, higher soil nutrients and overall CBD levels but the data is not statistically significant enough to say that this treatment performed better than the other 3 treatments.

Year manuscript completed

2020

Year degree awarded

2020

Author's Keywords

fertilizer in hemp, soil amendment, hemp, soil sample analysis, THC and CBD levels

Committee Chair

Brian Parr

Committee Member

Kristie Guffey

Committee Member

Alyx Shultz

Document Type

Thesis

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